The expanding gas in the system lifted her fast. The walls whirred past, streaks of black limestone. Up and up and up, the long bore sucking the circle of light ahead of her, like a dream, look after yourself thudding in her ears with every heartbeat. Until at last, unexpectedly, she surged out of the top. Into air.
It was dark. She fumbled one elbow over the side of the chimney, breathing hard. Held herself level, only her face at the surface. Her legs she wedged in place, keeping her shoulder near the edge. If anything came at her she’d ram the dump valve against the rock, offload the air from her suit and drop straight back down the chimney. She concentrated on her breathing. In and out. In and out.
Almost a minute passed. No hands grabbed her head. No face appeared in front of her mask. Tentatively she lifted the light out of the water and aimed it in front of her. The beam floundered in the darkness and hit rock about twenty feet away – a mossed, dripping rockface. She moved the beam to her left: more rock. No mist, no moon, no trees. Instead, when she turned it skywards, the light found a roof almost forty feet above. The rumours had been true. She’d come out in one of the old lead caves.
There’d been accidental deaths in other UK dive units and after those it had been drummed into her in training: never take the mask off. Not until you know what the air’s like. She inched herself up with her feet, pulling herself out so she was kneeling astride the hole, sitting on her heels, tensed, the torch rammed out in front of her like a weapon, all the time ready to drop straight back into the chimney. Slowly, with her free hand, she lifted the mask webbing away from her ear, tipped her head to one side, held her breath and listened.
Something was breathing. Somewhere in the darkness. Hiding in the rocks.
She lifted the mask. Sniffed. Tasted the air. Waited. It was clean. Damp and full of the smells of water and rotting leaves. But clean. She looped the mask on one wrist so it was ready to pull back on, and put the fingers of her right hand on the floor. Leg muscles screaming, she tipped forward a bit and trained the flashlight on the sound.
The beam hit black rock and slithered around. Then, wedged between a crevice, something glinted. Eyes. Elliptical, set straight and level about three feet above the ground. Human eyes, but yellow and polluted. Staring at her. They blinked in the light and then, for a second, a large hand came up to shield them. Now she could judge the size of his head. It was anvil-shaped, the jaw too big, the neck squashed, almost non-existent. She could see the protruding tops of the ribcage, the way the bones looked too big. Could hear laboured breathing. Not an elf. Not a troll or a pixie or a gnome. Not a Tokoloshe. This was a human being. Wearing a threadbare sweatshirt and shorts, mashed-up flip-flops on his feet. She held herself steady. Held herself calm.
‘I’m police. Don’t move. Don’t come near me.’
The eyes blinked.
‘You take one step towards me and you’ll find yourself in the biggest shit fight you could imagine. OK?’
A hesitation. Then he nodded.
She pushed herself upright. Faced him squarely.
‘Amos. You’re Amos. Have you been following me?’
He shook his head.
‘What about that day in the squat last week? The day we broke in?’ She ran the back of her wrist across her mouth to clean away the taste of the quarry. ‘There was me and another officer. A man. In plain clothes.’
Silence. The eyes regarded her carefully, and now she glimpsed something else in the torchlight. A glimmer of plastic – storage containers, white plastic. The sort of thing you’d see in a teenager’s bedroom. Four, maybe five, stacked one on top of another. Then she saw more belongings. Smelt something burning. Saw a battered sleeping-bag. And it struck her that he was living here. Here, in the dark among the moss and the rotting leaves and the dead insects, he was trying to carve out an existence.
‘I don’t know who you are, but you’re not from England. You’re African. From Tanzania.’
The eyes stayed steady. Gazed at her. Waited for her to continue.
‘You’re illegal. And you’re in serious shit. Here and back home too.’ She moved her tongue around, tried to coax some saliva into her mouth. ‘I could make that shit deeper. I’ll do it if I have to.’
The head must have tilted a little, because the angle of the eyes changed. They were still focused on her, but the breathing had altered too. It was softer. Deeper and slower. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from those eyes. Watching her. Not blinking.
‘I’m going to give you something now. You’ll understand when you see what it is. You’re going to sort it and you’re never going to speak about it again. You try and turn it back on me and you’ll regret it. I know what the police will look for so I’ve done some things to the…’
She had to break off and press her fingertips to her throat to stop her voice wavering. The compressed air was making her throat dry.
‘I’ve done some things to the body that’ll stop them tracing her to me. If you try to go to the police they’ll think it was you who killed her. But…’ she had to pause again, get her voice in control ‘… if you do this properly, with respect, I’ll find a way to help you. I don’t know how but I will. I’ll find ways to protect you. It’s a simple thing. A straight swap.’
For a moment the little man was motionless. Then, his movement barely perceptible, he lifted his head and lowered it. He was nodding.
She wiped her nose and took a deep breath. ‘Good. That was all I needed to say.’
She lifted her mask, pulled the webbing down over her wet hair, letting the visor sit on top of her head. Putting her hands on the floor she crouched down next to the chimney mouth, swung her legs round and dropped them into the water. She waited a moment or two, holding the man’s gaze. ‘One more thing.’
His eyes lifted a little. Questioning.
‘I’m sorry. Very sorry.’
Then she pulled up her mask and was gone, lost in a burr of bubbles that broke and spat in the darkness.
71
In the car outside Lindermilk’s bungalow Caffery washed down the hospital tramadol and codeine with a can of Sprite Lite. Given time, the drugs might touch the pain, but he knew they wouldn’t send him to sleep. Too much had happened today.
He drove to the bottom of the Farleigh Park Hall driveway and sat staring at its blazing lights for a long time, lighting cigarette after cigarette. Now it was dark the CSI team had stopped the examination of Gerber’s house. They’d start again in the morning. Maybe they should be looking for human remains, he thought. Misty Kitson’s. In the morning he’d tell them that, then go back to see Gerber’s secretary, Marsha. Misty had already had some cosmetic surgery on her nose to rebuild it after the damage done by years of hoovering up cocaine. He remembered that much from the files; the op had been done by an Iranian in Harley Street, but maybe she’d wanted more. Maybe she’d had an appointment to see Gerber. The names might be fake, people get embarrassed, one of the secretaries had said. Could you have done Misty too, you bastard? Could you?
When he’d smoked four cigarettes he still wasn’t sleepy. He left a message on Powers’s answerphone – Call me. Something important – started the car and headed east, meaning to go home. Instead he found himself thinking again about Amos Chipeta. About what he wanted. He thought of a bracelet of human hair, meant to ward off evil. He found his car meandering, taking him into the sharp dark forest of Stockhill. At just after two a.m., instead of coming into his darkened driveway at Priddy, he pulled off the main drag and into the little lane that led to the Elf’s Grotto quarries.